


The World Forgetting, By The World Forgot

by Anonymous



Series: RNM Week 2019 [5]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M, Malex, Post season finale, ersatz science, rnmweek 2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-24 00:41:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20017432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Michael and Alex erase each other from their memories. It does not go according to plan.[Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Roswell style]





	The World Forgetting, By The World Forgot

**Author's Note:**

> A strange, niche choice for a season-finale-compliant riff/AU? Absolutely. 
> 
> I've adapted the same premise--a couple undergoes an experimental medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories. The story is inspired by the film, but you don't need to be familiar with Eternal Sunshine to make sense of it.
> 
> Written for Roswell Week 2019, Days 5-7.

_How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot!_  
_The world forgetting, by the world forgot._  
_Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!_  
_Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d._  
  
  
  
**_The present._ **

_Valentine’s Day_ , Alex thinks grimly. A holiday invented by greeting card companies to make ordinary people feel like shit.

Maybe that’s why he’s driving out to the desert with no particular destination in mind. To get away from it all. The paper hearts. The pink bunting. The Valentine’s Special at the Crashdown. His happily paired-up friends. Liz and Max. Max recently came back from the dead; Alex is still hazy on the specifics. Point is, Liz and Max, together again, happily ever after. Even Maria has a boyfriend now, though Alex can’t recall his name. Doesn’t matter. His two best friends have their boyfriends, he has none, so why not waste a tank of gas driving aimlessly through the desert.

Sand, though. It’s overrated. Just tiny little rocks, stirred up by the wheels of his jeep, ricocheting across the windshield. The glass is already cracked in places. _Thud._ That was a pebble. _Fuck._ Alex slows to inspect the damage. Another spider web of cracks; miniscule, but obvious to anyone who might be looking. Maybe he should go back to driving the Humvee, which has a windshield built to withstand _bullets._

Up ahead, he spots a battered Frankenstein of a truck pulled over on the opposite side of the road, hood popped. Alex rolls down his window. “Car trouble?” he calls.

The driver slams the bonnet, looking every bit as bad-tempered as Alex feels. Broad-shouldered, rangy yet muscular build, cowboy hat pulled low, a certain sway about the hips as he saunters over… Alex experiences a powerful swell of déjà vu and blinks several times. The sensation only intensifies when the guy takes off his hat and runs a hand through his luxuriant mop of golden-brown curls. Strong nose, hazel eyes… this guy makes an _impression_.

“Car trouble?” Alex repeats, his breath a puff of smoke on the chilly air.

The cowboy rests his elbows on Alex’s windowsill, which brings him awfully close to Alex’s face. Alex feels his stomach muscles contract.

“ _Engine_ trouble,” the guy says, rolling his eyes expressively. “She doesn’t like the cold.” He jabs his thumb over his shoulder at the truck.

“I could take a look,” Alex offers dubiously, though he’s no hand with cars.

“Nah, you’re good,” the cowboy says. “She needs a new alternator belt. Luckily I’m a mechanic, amongst other things, but I don’t have my tools on me, so…” He smiles, a charming smile that strikes Alex as well-rehearsed. But not disingenuous. “Any chance you could give me a lift back to the scrapyard, Private?”

“ _Private_?” Something in Alex’s brain twangs, like a broken string.

The stranger jerks his chin at the Air Force decal on the windshield and raises his eyebrows.

“Captain,” Alex corrects him. “Former captain. I mean, I’m still a captain, for now, but my enlistment period’s up in a few weeks, and then I’ll be a retired…” the words dribble off. What the hell is wrong with him? A good-looking guy smiles at him, and suddenly he’s seventeen again? He’s a war hero, for chrissake. He has a Purple Heart.

“Captain,” the cowboy repeats in his honeyed drawl. “My mistake.”

“‘Private’ isn’t even a rank in the Air Force,” Alex hears himself say, and promptly curses himself for a pedant. “And yeah, sure, I can give you a ride.”

“Thanks,” the guy says, rapping his knuckles on the windowsill before walking around the front of the car. Alex seizes the momentary reprieve to steady himself. _Get your shit together, Manes._

The cowboy swings agilely into the passenger seat, slamming the door. “Need directions?” he asks, rubbing his hands together and blowing on them. He’s underdressed for the cold weather, his only layer a frayed denim jacket.

“Nope,” Alex says, surprised to discover that’s the case. He can’t recall ever driving out to the scrapyard—Sanders’ Auto, as it’s otherwise known—yet the route seems engrained in his mind already.

“Never seen you out there before,” the cowboy remarks.

“Well, I grew up in Roswell,” Alex says, pressing down on the gas. Too hard, apparently—the car lurches forward. Alex feels the back of his neck heat up. He can’t always tell how much pressure he’s applying with the prosthetic, leading to the occasional abrupt start.

His passenger doesn’t comment, even though the momentum sends the hat flying off his head to land on the dashboard. The guy doesn’t reach for it, and there’s something familiar, almost intimate, about the hat just resting there.

“Michael Guerin,” the stranger says, once Alex has sorted himself out and got the damn car under control.

“Alex Manes,” Alex replies, taking his right hand off the wheel to shake Guerin’s.

“ _Captain_ Alex Manes,” Guerin corrects, and Alex thinks he might have winked, though it’s probably a trick of the light. _Focus, Manes. Eyes on the road._ After a moment, Guerin asks if he’s been back in Roswell long.

“Almost a year.”

“And we’ve never run into each other? Odd.”

It _is_ odd, Alex thinks, because this guy does not blend into a crowd. But then, Alex has spent the past year in a kind of fog, his powers of observation dulled by the pain in his leg, the overall discomfort of his homecoming—and, of course, the bizarre chain of events that entangled his life with those of Roswell’s resident aliens, Max and Isobel Evans, and Isobel’s erstwhile husband, Noah… and nothing was the same after, not for him, not for Liz or Maria or Kyle, all of whom had played their parts, too, and then there was Rosa, not so long out of the ground herself…

But obviously he isn’t about to assail Guerin with all _that._

“We must’ve overlapped in high school, unless you’re way older than you look. What year did you graduate?” Guerin asks.

Alex glances over and sees Guerin drumming his fingers on his thighs. Nervously? No, Guerin doesn’t seem the type to get _nervous._ “2008,” Alex says.

“Hey, me too. Totally weird, man. Did you look, like, really different back then?”

“I was a little…” Alex can’t bring himself to say _emo._ It would suck if Guerin turns out to be one of those assholes who slammed him into lockers and generally made his life hell after he came out. “ _Different_ ,” he says.

“And then you enlisted right after graduation?”

Guerin is just being friendly, just making conversation, but Alex tenses up anyway. “Three tours. Iraq,” he says shortly, hoping Guerin will take the hint.

Guerin does; or rather, he’s gotten distracted. He takes out his phone, which has begun vibrating with a string of incoming text messages. Alex counts seven. “Fuckin’ Valentine’s Day,” Guerin grumbles under his breath, starting to text back.

“You gonna be late for a date or something?” Alex asks. Neutrally.

“Yeah, my girlfriend…”

His stomach plummets. Of course Guerin has a girlfriend. Of course he does. The guy is all macho cowboy swagger, with that hair, that jaw, those eyes, those lips, those shoulders—. Alex cuts himself off, mid-inventory. He has no business itemizing Guerin like that. Guerin has a girlfriend, Guerin is into girls, end of story.

When he chances another peek over, he thinks Guerin looks flushed, almost uncomfortable, as he stuffs his phone back in his pocket.

“She pissed?”

“Extremely.” Guerin thumps his head back against the headrest. “This goddamn holiday, I’m telling you… Does anyone actually enjoy it, ever?”

“I was wondering the same thing earlier,” Alex says, pleasure worming its way down his spine, and Guerin offers him a crooked half-smile in return. But then: “Why didn’t you ask me to drive you into town? You could’ve saved Valentine’s.”

“Nah, it was all bust anyway,” Guerin answers, which strikes Alex as a rather defeatist attitude to take. But maybe Guerin and his girlfriend were having problems, maybe Guerin was looking for an excuse to ditch their date, maybe…

It is none of his business.

He pulls up at the scrapyard. He’s unnerved to realize he made the whole drive on a kind of autopilot. “Here we are,” he announces, superfluously.

“I owe ya big,” Guerin says. He puts his hand on the door.

“Won’t you need a ride back to your truck?” Alex inquires then.

“That’d be asking too much,” Guerin says. “I can call in a favor. Got plenty of people who owe me.”

“I could—I mean, I don’t have any plans or anything,” Alex fumbles, and immediately upbraids himself. _You fucking idiot, do you_ want _him to know how pathetic you are, driving around by yourself on Valentine’s Day?_

Guerin hesitates. “Why don’t you come in a sec?” he says. “Have a drink while I get my stuff together.”

Alex consents. Not too eagerly, he hopes.

The scrapyard has the look of an abandoned fairground, detritus of a carnival that came and went decades ago. Rusted metal, flaking paint, salvaged car parts, piles of them, almost sculptural. It has a kind of desolate beauty. 

“I live over here.” Guerin leads the way to an airstream trailer, obviously well-cared for; it’s the shiniest piece of metal in the vicinity. “I’m not really a… four-walls, picket fence-type guy,” he adds, almost apologetically. He unlocks the door and steps back for Alex to go in first.

Another wave of déjà vu crashes over him as he takes in Guerin’s tiny living space. The compressed kitchen, the bed under the window, even the diagrams and equations taped to the walls, everything in its right place—

In its right place?

“I thought you said you were a mechanic,” he says, moving closer to inspect a sketch of some sort of vehicle, surrounded by vectors and scribbled calculations.

“I’m also an engineer, kind of,” Guerin says, but he doesn’t elaborate. “Is Mezcal okay?” he asks instead. “I’m lower on supplies than I thought.”

“I _do_ have to drive us back,” Alex says. “So just the one.” He listens to Guerin clatter around, still mesmerized by the drawing. His knowledge of coding offers little insight into the complex functions and symbols Guerin has written out, though he does recognize a few: _c,_ that’s the speed of light, and _g_ is gravity—

“Something to do with quantum?” he ventures as Guerin presses a glass into his hand.

“Oh, that? I was just messing around,” Guerin says, too casually, and Alex narrows his eyes. “You’d fall asleep if I tried to explain it to you, it’s that boring,” he insists, and sits down on the bed, gesturing for Alex to take the only chair. “Take a load off, Priv—I mean, _Captain._ ”

And he definitely winks this time.

Alex blushes.

He notices a bottle of nail varnish remover sitting on the table, incongruous amidst the jumble of books, papers, and tools. “I used to paint my nails in high school,” he remarks, a little wistfully.

“What?” Guerin looks round. “Oh—that. I don’t actually—uh—stain remover?”

Now it’s _his_ turn to blush.

 _Interesting_ , Alex thinks.

“You’re sure we haven’t met before?” Guerin shrugs out of his jacket and sprawls back on his elbows. The motion pulls his white t-shirt taut across his chest and shoulders; Alex can see the definition of his pecs through the thin fabric. “Feels like we have, doesn’t it?”

“Past life?” Alex suggests lightly. He doesn’t want to unsettle Guerin by saying _yes, I feel like I’ve known you for years, maybe my whole life_. Suddenly it’s too warm inside the airstream, poorly insulated though it is. He takes off his own jacket and drapes it over the back of his chair. When he looks up, Guerin is rolling his eyes.

“You don’t believe in that stuff, do you?” he says. “My girlfriend’s way into it—karma and reincarnation and palmistry and all that star shit. Astrology.”

“I have a friend like that,” Alex says, thinking of Maria. “But me personally? No.”

“Me neither. But—” Guerin purses his lips into an adorable little rosebud, and Alex takes a hasty swig of Mezcal. “Still weird though—how easy it is to talk to you.”

“Sometimes it’s easier to connect with strangers. Less baggage, you know?”

“Yeah.” Guerin opens and closes his left hand a few times like it pains him.

“Something happen to your hand?” Alex asks.

“Just an old injury,” Guerin says. “Never healed quite right, though it doesn’t look as bad as it used to.”

Alex is conscious of the dull ache in his knee, always aggravated when he drives for any length of time. He rubs his leg discreetly and casts about for a new subject. His eye lands on a guitar propped against the wall. “You play?” he asks, indicating the instrument.

“Used to, when I was a teenager.” Guerin frowns and scratches his jaw. “Then I fucked up my hand and couldn’t play for years. Starting to get the hang of it again these days.”

“May I?” Alex blurts.

“Yeah, help yourself,” Guerin says.

Alex settles the instrument in his lap and checks the strings.

“It’s in tune,” Guerin says, a little defensively, and Alex smiles.

“So it is, cowboy.” He doublechecks that his fingers are positioned correctly—he’s rusty, too—and begins to play.

Guerin tips his head to the side, listening. “Elliott Smith?” he says after a couple minutes.

“Bright Eyes, actually.” His fingers slip on the frets. Pulling a face, he finds the right chord again. “But it does sound like Elliott Smith. Conor Oberst owes him a debt, for sure.”

“Bright Eyes… Bright Eyes… I must’ve listened to them in high school, can’t really remember any of the lyrics now…”

Alex can, but he’s not about to sing them for Guerin. He feels peculiar. Dissociated but, at the same time, acutely aware of his body, and how ungainly it has become. The words run through his head, like a call out of the blue from an old old friend.

_Yours was the first face that I saw_  
_I think I was blind before I met you_  
_I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’ve been  
_ _But I know where I want to go_

He’s having trouble breathing; there’s a tightness in his chest and a catch in his throat. If this is a panic attack—and what else can it be—he’s about to disgrace himself in front of this stranger, this _Guerin_ , and then he’ll have to explain about Baghdad and the IED and the—

“Alex, hey.” Suddenly Guerin is standing right in front of him, lifting the guitar out of his hands. “Are you—”

“Guerin, I—” His hands come up without any warning, knotting themselves in the front of Guerin’s shirt, and Guerin takes him by the elbows and pulls him to his feet. Alex finds himself on the verge of tears. “I don’t—”

Their eyes lock. Guerin’s draw him in, such an unusual color, brown and green and gold all at once. The hairs on the back of his neck stand up then, because Guerin’s eyes are twin vortexes, ancient and haunting and not quite human, but brimming with the same emotion Alex feels stirring within himself, and suddenly the distance is collapsing between them.

Guerin kisses him hard, almost savagely, yet the hand cupping his cheek is impossibly gentle. Without having to think about it, Alex lets his own hands glide into Guerin’s hair, making Guerin moan when he drags his nails over his scalp. He opens his mouth to Guerin’s tongue, hot and insistent against his lips. They sway on the spot, Guerin surging closer, Alex clinging on for balance.

Suddenly Guerin scoops him up and flings him down on the bed, knocking all the air out of his lungs. It’s a bold move, proprietary and utterly presumptuous, and Alex’s whole body quickens with arousal. Guerin is looming over him, chest heaving mightily. He wrenches the t-shirt over his head, and Alex, scrabbling to undo his fly, loses track of what he’s doing. There’s a sinewy expanse of golden skin, but he doesn’t get a good look because Guerin pounces. Their bodies slam together, Guerin’s arms bracketing his head, and Alex finds his legs spreading to accommodate Guerin’s weight between them.

This is— _unreal_ , he thinks, as Guerin attacks his neck, rough jaw scraping over sensitive skin, sucking what is sure to be a colorful bruise right above his collarbone. People don’t just fit together like long-lost puzzle pieces; they orbit eccentric loops, they bump against one another, occasionally they achieve a fragile stasis. But they don’t _fit together_ like they’ve never been apart—like they were never meant to be apart—with their molecules knitting over the fractures until there’s no evidence of a break at all.

“Michael—” The name spills from his mouth, unbidden.

When Guerin—Michael, _yes, that sounds better_ —lifts his head to look at him, his eyes are wet. “Alex, I don’t know what’s happening to me—”

“Me neither.” Alex arches up to kiss him and misses his mark, catching the corner of his mouth instead. “But I don’t want to stop. Do you?”

“No.” Michael rears back on his knees. “Let’s get rid of this,” he suggests, grabbing the hem of Alex’s shirt and yanking it up. Alex raises his arms so Michael can undress him, and as soon as the shirt is dispensed with, Michael tugs him into a sitting position so they can keep kissing, sloppy and desperate.

Then Michael finds his zipper, the heel of his hand rubbing him through his jeans. His pelvis jerks up in response. Michael begins to drag his pants down, and that’s when Alex remembers himself.

“I, um,” he says, and Michael sits back a little, breathing heavily.

“Too fast? Fuck, I’m sorry, I should have asked—”

“No, I want to, it’s not that.” Alex closes his eyes and reopens them. “It’s… my leg.”

“Is the prosthetic bothering you?” Michael asks. “D’you want to take it off first?”

Alex stares at him in open-mouthed astonishment. “How did you—”

“I noticed the modifications to your car,” Michael explains. “And you were a little, er, inconsistent on the gas—” Alex makes an outraged noise, and Michael grins. It’s a very different smile from the one he’d painted on earlier, and it makes his eyes crinkle up at the corners. “But you’re a very safe driver!” he adds consolingly, and Alex flips him off—speechless at Michael’s audacity to tease him about his injury, even more astounded at the delight he takes in the teasing.

He relaxes, enough to roll up his pant leg and fumble with the release mechanism. Michael already knows, so perhaps he’ll be less shocked by the fact of the prosthesis itself, and if Alex leaves the sock on, Michael won’t have to look at the unsightly mass of scarred, pitted skin below his knee… 

Michael touches his wrist. “Is that a vacuum suspension?”

“That’s right,” Alex says, impressed. The prosthesis comes free and he yanks it out, the suspension sleeve dragging painfully on his skin. Michael takes it from him and leans it casually against the wall by the bed. _Like he’s been handling people’s fake legs all his life_ , Alex reflects, bemused.

“Good?” Michael’s fingers twitch at his belt loops. “Can I get rid of these now? They’re kind of in my way.”

Alex laughs. “Go ahead.”

Michael dispatches his pants with alacrity.

Alex hardly notices the sock has come off as well, he’s too busy grappling with Michael’s ridiculous belt buckle and admiring the cut of his hipbones. And when Michael’s jeans have come away, along with his underwear, he finds himself gaping, wide-eyed and dry-mouthed, at the absolute _vision_ that is Michael without his clothes on. Déjà vu creeps up the back of his neck, a prickle of unease, but he ignores it.

He moistens his lips with the tip of his tongue. 

Michael smirks.

When they’re both naked, Michael settles between his legs again and kisses him lazily. Alex’s heart is still thundering wildly, but the mad rush to strip each other’s clothes off has subsided into an easier rhythm. _We’re off the clock_ , Alex thinks. He stretches languorously beneath Michael, twining his arms around his neck. 

Then Michael’s cock drags against his, and his heightened senses kick into overdrive. He gropes for Michael’s ass, grabbing hold and pulling him closer. Michael gets with the program immediately, grinding his hips down in a slow, dirty circle. They both swear; Alex tilts his face up and Michael kisses him fiercely, rocking harder against him, and Alex wants, _he wants_ —

“Mm.” Michael flicks a wayward curl out of his face and regards Alex curiously. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever done this a guy before,” he says thoughtfully, and Alex can’t tell if it’s a question or a statement. Neither can Michael, apparently, because he continues: “I _feel_ like I have—been with a guy—because there’s something so familiar about this, like I know exactly what I’m doing, but I can’t remember actually having done it.”

Alex places his finger on the groove between Michael’s eyebrows and rubs it away. “It’s okay, Michael, it doesn’t matter to me either way.”

“Me neither—not the sex part—but my memory…” Then he shrugs it off. “What can I give you?” he asks, focusing those uncanny eyes on Alex again. “Is it better if you fuck me, or do you want me to fuck you? I…” Michael tilts his head, considering. “I sort of get the impression that I like both, that I’d want both with you. Whatever that’s worth.”

But those tantalizing possibilities are lost on Alex. His body has a will of its own now, each movement triggering a tiny earthquake, and his cock twitches every time Michael says _fuck._ “I—I think it’s too late for that, Michael, I’m so close, I just, I need—”

“Whatever you need, darlin’, I’ll give it to you.”

The endearment soaks into his skin like balm. Alex must be losing his mind; surely that can’t be _his_ voice begging for “everything, anything—just fucking _do_ something, Michael, please _—_ ”

And Michael does. He reaches between their sweat-slick bodies and wraps his fingers around Alex’s cock, his grip steady, practiced. Alex muffles a groan, hiking his left leg over Michael’s hip. “I’ve got you,” Michael murmurs, and then he keeps talking, crooning nonsense into Alex’s ear while he jerks him off: “Maybe next time I’ll open you up with my fingers, so slow you’ll be pulling my hair and ordering me to hurry up and just fuck you already… Or maybe I’ll ride your dick, know how much you love watching me up there… _Fuck_ Alex, look at you, you’re gonna be the death of me…”

Alex hides his face in Michael’s shoulder, nodding frantically as he thrusts into his hand. “Want it all,” he gasps, too far gone to wonder how Michael knows these things—or how he, Alex, knows them too, and knows them to be true. “Any way you’ll let me have you.”

He takes his pleasure selfishly, clutching at every bit of hot, sweaty skin he can get his hands on. When he chances a look upward, the expression on Michael’s face pierces his soul.

Tenderness.

Tenderness that has no place on the face of a stranger.  
  
  
  
**_Three days earlier._**

Alex knew he was pushing the speed limit, but he had to get to Michael. He just _had_ to _._ The sense of urgency propelling him onward had come out of nowhere, nothing; he’d simply had enough. Five days of sulking and avoiding each other since their last argument. Alex was _done_ with the bullshit, he was ready to take off the breaks and do this thing, this relationship, for _real_. No more dancing around. No more petty squabbling. No more staring into each other’s eyes and wondering who will be the first to lean in, and then hastily stepping back because they were trying to be _friends_ and _friends_ didn’t kiss while they worked through the damages they’d done one another over the last eleven years. _Friends_ didn’t try to date other people and fail at it spectacularly. Michael and Maria had broken up a few days ago; Liz had told him so over the phone. And Alex was ready. He loved Michael and he knew Michael loved him; they’d both said as much, so it was only a matter of time, really.

And now that time had arrived.

He pulled up in front of the airstream. His heart was thudding madly inside his chest, but his steps were measured, assured. This was _them,_ him and Michael, cosmic.

He set down the six-pack he’d brought and knocked on the door.

He waited. Michael’s truck was parked nearby, so presumably he was at home. Maybe he was asleep?

Alex knocked again, harder.

This scenario wasn’t playing out quite as he’d envisioned it.

He _pounded_ on the door. And it flew open, wildly, to reveal an incensed-looking Michael, his bad temper preceding him like a thundercloud. Alex took a step back.

“We’re _closed_!” Michael bellowed. “It’s the middle of the fucking night—bring your car back in the morning.”

“Michael, it’s me,” Alex said. He held up the sixer as a peace offering. “I came to talk.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Michael demanded.

“Ha ha,” Alex said weakly. “I guess I deserved that. I should’ve called, come over sooner—it’s always like a game of chicken with us, isn’t it, who’s gonna apologize first.”

“Dude, are you high?” Michael stared at him uncomprehendingly.

Alex began to feel uneasy. Michael had every right to be pissed, but he’d never been one for—

“This is private property, find somewhere else to sleep it off,” Michael advised, starting to shut the door.

“Michael, _wait_!” Alex shoved his foot in the doorjamb. “I just want to…”

He looked at him properly for the first time. Michael was sweaty and disheveled, his hair in utter disarray. He was shirtless, his jeans were unbuttoned, as if he’d just dragged them on to answer the door. And Alex could see the outline of his cock straining against the denim.

“Is there someone in there with you?” His voice cracked. He peered over Michael’s shoulder into the dark of the airstream, and, sure enough, someone was sitting up in Michael’s bed, pulling the sheet around herself.

It was Maria.

Alex took a step backward.

And another. Till he was stumbling away from the airstream, tripping over rocks, spare parts, his own two feet, in a desperate rush to _get away, get away, get away—_

The airstream door slammed shut.  
  
*  
  
Kyle was sitting in the living room wearing a pained expression as Alex paced and ranted.

“… I get back from the base last night and I’m just _so_ sick of the bullshit. It’s been going on long enough, we both know we’re meant to be together, so fuck _friends_ , right? I want this resolved, and I’m willing to swallow my pride and be the one to resolve it.”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “Uh-huh.”

“I’m thinking _what the hell_ , Guerin and I always do better with spontaneity, when we haven’t had time to overthink or whatever, so I drive straight to the scrapyard, and—”

“I know,” Kyle interrupted. “We’ve been over this part. Guerin’s in there with DeLuca.”

“Why would he _do_ that to me?” Alex shouted, his voice rising to a howl. “ _Why_? They broke up a few days ago, Liz told me, and Michael’d been wanting out of that relationship for _weeks_ —”

“It’s fucking shitty,” Kyle agreed. “Can I get you another beer?”

“I can get myself another beer, Valenti, this is my fucking house,” he snapped, starting another circuit around the room. “He’s punishing me, obviously. I can’t _believe_ Maria would fall for whatever line he gave her, she’s too smart for that, he must’ve really…” He changed course suddenly. “Michael’s been through a lot,” he said sternly, as though Kyle had disagreed with him. “This is just a slip-up. I can forgive him. I should just go back to the airstream, try to talk to him ag—”

“I don’t think you should do that, man,” Kyle said.

“Too desperate?”

“Maybe, er. Maybe you need to look at this as a sign to move on. Just make a clean break,” Kyle said.

“You know, Kyle, you’re really tanking at the whole friend thing right now,” Alex complained. “You’re just sitting there, ‘uh-huh,’ ‘yeah,’ ‘have another beer’—you know me, you know Guerin, you know we can never _ever_ make a clean break from each other, that’s the whole problem!”

Kyle sighed. “Alex, listen, man, the thing is…” He trailed off, suddenly very interested in a discoloration on the floorboards. “Is that blood?” he asked.

“Yeah, it’s blood, Guerin bled all over the floor last week. He’d been in a fight, I patched him up…” Alex banged his head against the wall. “ _See_?” he said woefully. “All roads lead back to Guerin.”

“I shouldn’t be doing this,” Kyle said, pulling out his phone. “Liz is gonna _kill_ me for this, but. Bros over—uh, other friends. And ex-girlfriends. Never mind. Here. Read this.” He handed Alex the phone. “And please. Don’t shoot the messenger.”

Alex looked at the screen. It was a text Liz had sent Kyle, two days prior:

_Hey so this is gonna sound insane, but I helped Michael erase Alex from his memory. Call me as soon as you can. And if you see Michael, please don’t mention their relationship to him again. Like, ever. I’ll explain._

“WHAT THE FUCK?”  
  
*  
  
“Kyle never should have showed that to you,” Liz fumed. “Hijo de puta, voy a matarlo—”

Alex had cornered her in her lab, and now he towered over her, arms folded, every bit the Manes military man. “This is a hoax, right? Some kind of prank, that you and Michael—”

“No.” Liz shook her head miserably. “Escuchame, Alex, I already regret ev—”

“ _You erased me from his memory_ ,” Alex hissed. “Eleven years, Liz, that’s almost eleven years of—do you have _any_ idea what you’ve—the most important person in my life— _gone_ —” Abruptly, he turned his back to her and covered his face. The tears dripped through his fingers anyway. His shoulders heaved.

He was— _shattered._ The loss was so profound he couldn’t think, he couldn’t feel, he couldn’t even imagine living from one minute to the next—

Michael had _erased_ him. Alex didn’t exist anymore, so far as Michael was concerned. Which was the same as not existing _at all_ , because they were twin halves of the same whole. Never meant to break apart. And yeah, maybe it was fucked up, maybe no one’s lives should be so closely entwined, but that was _them_. A wild combination. It was hard hard work, but never too hard. How could Alex possibly move through the world without—

He felt Liz’s gentle touch on his shoulder and wrenched away. “No, don’t you touch me, you—you— _evil scientist_ —you’re supposed to be my best friend—” He spun round and glared at her through his tears. “You’d better explain. Right now. From the beginning.”

“It started with Isobel, okay?” She looked around, as if Isobel were in the room with them. “She came to me, and she asked if I could help her, you know, unscramble her brain, after having Noah in there for so long. Because she didn’t know which memories were hers, and which were—residuals—from when he was controlling her. She’s been miserable these past few months, and I—I didn’t think it was an unreasonable request. So I… came up with something.”

“You always do.”

“Alex, querido…” Liz reached out to him, then obviously thought better of it. She tucked her hands in the pockets of her lab coat, rocking to and fro miserably. “Remember the antidote Michael and I created, the one we used to heal her? It had a side effect. It dredged up those memories Noah had repressed, the ones about Rosa, and how she died… Well, I adapted the formula, and this new serum does the opposite, it _erases_ the unwanted memories.”

“How clever,” Alex said.

“Isobel must have told Michael about it,” Liz continued. “I mean, of course she did. He’s her brother. And the other day Michael came storming in here, just like you did now, and he was a complete wreck. I’ve seen him bad, but never _that_ bad…”

“We had a fight,” Alex admitted. “A really big one. He’d been drinking too much, and I… never mind. It doesn’t matter.”

“He was almost incoherent, telling me all this stuff about how badly he wanted—he _needed_ —to start over, because he couldn’t live like that anymore, how the two of you had destroyed each other’s lives over and over, until there was nothing left…” Liz looked at him apologetically. “He said he just wanted to move on.”

“And you _helped_ him? Liz, he was probably drunk—”

“I told him not to be stupid. Then he used his telekinesis to just _zoom_ a couple vials of the serum right into his hand, and I told him, I _begged_ him to stop, Alex, I did—I told him if he overdosed on it he could end up _braindead—_ ”

“Oh, so _that’s_ why you helped him.”

“And I feel like utter shit, Alex, but I _did not know_ what else to do.” Liz was in tears. “He’s too powerful, okay? He’s stronger than Max or Isobel… And he would’ve done it anyway, with or without my help. You know Mikey, he’s like that. Reckless. Impulsive. And in the moment, it seemed like the lesser of two evils—to prevent him from potentially turning into a vegetable! So, I… yes. I helped him.”

“This is _Roswell_ ,” Alex said disbelievingly. “This is a small town. What did you _think_ would happen? That we’d just never run into each other—”

“We were trying to figure that out—me and Isobel and Max—Max thinks maybe this will be good for Mikey, give him the chance to finally lea—”

“Max has never understood the first thing about our relationship—or about Michael, for that matter! So don’t you dare—” Then another thought, a worse thought: “Does _Maria_ know?” he demanded. “She certainly didn’t waste any time jumping back in bed with him, did she?” 

“She doesn’t know about the erasing, of course she doesn’t!” Liz exclaimed. “I mean, I _will_ have to tell her, and ruin her happiness all over again, but— _no_ , God no. Michael went back to her after the erasing and apologized for breaking things off, and—”

“Whatever. I don’t care.” Alex cut her off. He took a deep breath. “I want it done. You have to do it to me, too.”

“Alex, _no_ —”

“It’s not _fair_!” Alex shouted, his throat tearing open. “How can I go on living when the _love of my life_ looks at me like a total stranger, because he has _no memory_ of me? Liz, you have to do it. You fucking have to. It’s the only way you can make this right, and you know it.”

Liz was crying. “I’m sorry, Alex, I’m so, _so_ sorry.”

He didn’t want to hear it. “What happens next?” he said.  
  
*  
  
Back at the cabin, Alex took out a garbage back and started flinging stuff inside, almost indiscriminately. 

_The first thing you need to do_ , Liz told him _, is go home and collect every single thing you own that has some association with Michael. Photos. Clothing. Any toiletries he left in your bathroom. Books. Music, playlists, all that. You have to empty your home—your_ life _—of Michael._

He didn’t have much. It wasn’t like he and Michael had been living together. They hadn’t even been dating, really, just—. It didn’t matter. He threw away photographs, CDs, the sweatpants Michael always borrowed when he stayed over. His toothbrush. Any book that had _space_ , or _space travel_ in the table of contents. The liquor he kept for Michael in the kitchen cabinet. He felt nothing, not even when he came upon his brother’s guitar, the one he had gifted Michael when they were seventeen—

Liz had advised him to burn it all, but that struck Alex as excessively dramatic. Something _Michael_ would have done. So he chucked the bag into Valenti’s creepy-ass basement and moved a chair over the trapdoor.

Then Liz arrived.

She asked him if this was what he really, _really_ wanted, and Alex said yes. She asked him why, and Alex said she already knew _why_ , but he spent a solid thirty minutes ranting about how much he despised Michael anyway.

Then Liz told him to make himself comfortable in the armchair, because he’d probably be out for the count. She fussed around him, tucking a pillow under his neck, retrieving the ottoman so he could prop up his bad leg.

Alex swallowed the sleeping pills she gave him. Liz smiled encouragingly, even though her mouth was trembling. “It’ll happen in reverse,” she told him, “starting with your most recent memories and going backwards from there. Well, more or less. Sometimes the order is a little scrambled, but that won’t matter. There’s—there’s an emotional core to each of our memories. The serum is designed to eradicate this core, which initiates a degradation process, so… By the time you wake up, all the memories we’ve targeted—memories of Michael—will have withered and disappeared. As in… a dream upon waking. Sounds like a Max thing, doesn’t it? _A dream upon waking_. Okay. I’m gonna give you the injection now, if you’re ready?”

“Okay,” Alex said. He was beginning to feel foggy. Then: “You said if Michael overdosed by mistake, it could have left him braindead,” he mumbled. “Is there any risk of brain damage?”

“Well, technically the procedure _is_ brain damage,” Liz said. Her voice seemed to reach him from across a great distance. “But only on par with a night of heavy drinking.”

Alex registered a sting in the crook of his elbow, but his vision was already blacking out.

“I’ll be right here with you, the whole time,” Liz said.  
  
*  
  
_Alex is sitting outside the airstream, wrapped in a blanket, the last dying embers of the fire flickering across his face. He’s been waiting for hours._

_Headlights appear in the distance. Michael’s truck careens into the scrapyard and comes to an abrupt halt, kicking up a cloud of sand and dust. The door opens, and Michael topples out._

_“Yo ho ho!” he calls, weaving his way over._

_“It’s four in the morning,” Alex says._

How bizarre, Alex thought. There was an Alex sitting in the chair, and here he was, another Alex, this Alex, hovering outside the action like a spectator.

This is the last time I saw you, Michael. While you still knew me.

_“You said you wanted to talk. You asked me to meet you here at ten,” Alex says._

_“Guess I lost track of time.” Michael shrugs._

_“You were driving drunk.”_

_“Just a little. I’m a little tipsy.”_

_“You’re fucking irresponsible,” Alex snaps. “Never mind me, waiting up here all night. You could’ve killed somebody. What do I know, maybe you did kill somebody. Should I check the grille for children and small animals?”_

_“Oh Christ I didn’t kill anybody. You need to chill the fuck out.”_

_“And you need to get help.”_

_“C’mon, Alex, you’re just pissed ’cause I was out late, and now you’re wondering if I had sex with someone. A girl named Mari-aaaaa.” Michael flings himself into the chair opposite Alex. “Well, I didn’t. Have sex with her. But I didn’t break up with her, either. ’Cause she’s nice to me. Nicer than_ you, _Private. I’ll end it tomorrow.”_

_“I came because you asked me,” Alex says. “I’m not here to boss you around or hold you accountable. I’m not your mother, Guerin.”_

Fuck. Alex could have punched himself.

_“Michael, I’m—”_

Michael, I’m—

_“You’re right, you’re not my mother,” Michael says quietly. “I don’t have a mother. And do you remember why that is, Alex?”_

_“Michael—”_

_“BECAUSE YOUR FAMILY FUCKING KILLED HER, THAT’S WHY!” Michael shouts. Then he stands up, clutching the back of the chair. “You need to leave,” he whispers. “Leave, before I say something I’ll regret. Jesus, Alex, you and your family, you’re like this_ virus _that’s infected my whole life—”_

_“This is all completely fucked, Michael! If I go, I’m not coming back again, I mean it this time. I’m done.”_

_“So go.”_

The scene blurred. Oh, thank god, Alex thought. That’s over.

Suddenly there was another Michael standing beside him.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he said.

“You tell me.” The other Michael glared. “This is your show, Manes.”

“Well, it’s all going away,” Alex told him as the airstream vanished, and the truck, and then the Michael and Alex by the fire vanished, too. “Everything I’ve done to ruin your life, Guerin, it’s being wiped away right now!”

“I’m glad,” Michael said. 

“Me too,” said Alex.

And then he felt himself tipping backward, falling through time—

_“I need to break up with Maria,” Michael says. He’s stretched out on Alex’s sofa, holding a bag of frozen peas to his face, staring at the ceiling. “I’m so—exhausted. Tired of hiding. I thought, after Iz and I brought Max back, I’d be okay, but…”_

_“You know how I feel about you,” Alex says. “So that disqualifies any advice I’d give.”_

_Michael continues his staring match with the ceiling. “I can’t be my whole self around her. I thought that was what I wanted_ , _that it would make me more human, but instead I just feel myself disappearing.” He turns his head to stare at Alex. His nose is bleeding heavily. “There’s only one person in the universe that I can trust with all of myself.”_

_Alex looks away. “You’re getting blood on my floor,” he says._

The memory dissolved. Alex felt a pang of regret. That was a lovely thing Michael had said, too bad it turned out to be a lie—

_Alex watches Michael and Maria make out at the Wild Pony. Liz and Rosa come over; Liz pushes a beer into his hand._

_“Stop torturing yourself,” she says._

That one could go.

_A desert faceoff:_

_“Where I stand, nothing’s changed.”_

_“Yeah. Including the way you look at me. And that’s a problem for me, Guerin. ’Cause every time you look at me, I’m seventeen again. And I forget the last ten years even happened. And then you look away, and I remember all over again. And it almost kills me every time.”_

_“I never look away. Not really.”_

But Michael had looked away, and he would never look back again.

_Down in the alien holding area, Alex and Michael are screaming at each other._

_“Guerin! Come on, we have to go!”_

_“I have to get through!”_

_“The alarm is not a suggestion, okay? Nothing gets out alive.”_

_“They’re my family, Alex!”_

_“All right, maybe. But you’re mine!”_

_“What? No! You gotta go, Alex.”_

_“I don’t look away, Guerin.”_

_“No. Go! Go! I don’t love you! I don’t! We’ve been holding onto this thing—and what? It’s gotten us nowhere. Just let go.”_

Michael was right; it had gotten them nowhere. Alex should have listened to him. But as he watched Michael and Alex scream at each other, with Michael’s mother looking on through the glass, he felt like he was tearing apart, just as he had on that terrible day. He wouldn’t let Michael die, he couldn’t—

_“You’re a miserable liar.”_

_Michael turns from him and presses his hand to the glass separating him from the elderly alien. Their hands glow orange. And Michael is smiling, beaming, for a few precious seconds before—_

_“She’s my m— she’s my…” Michael can’t say it. He clutches the front of Alex’s shirt and presses their foreheads together._

_“Your mother?”_

_Michael nods frantically._

_“Did she speak?”_

_“No.”_

_“Did she say anything?”_

_“No. No, but she said…” Michael looks at Alex with a kind of wonder on his face. “She said she loves me. And then she said to run.”_

“Liz!” Alex shouted desperately, as Caulfield Prison flickered out around him. “Liz, please! I’ve changed my mind! This is me changing my mind right now, okay? I don’t want this anymore. Wake me up! Please—”

But it was happening faster now, snippets of memories flashing through his brain at random—

_“You’re trying to leave. The planet.”_

Gone.

_“I’m an airman. I can’t be with a criminal.”_

Gone.

_“Finally a real Manes man.”_

_“Three-quarters of one.” Alex bangs his crutch against the prosthesis. “What are you doing in this trailer? Sure as hell doesn’t look legal.”_

_“A little weed. A lot of casual sex. Oh, and covert plans to violently overthrow the government. Quick, Alex, run and tell your daddy.”_

Gone.

_“We’re not kids anymore. What I want doesn’t matter.”_

Gone.

_“You really do live in your truck.”_

_“All the rumors about you true, too?”_

Gone.

_“Guess you’re still the guy just looking for any excuse to walk away, huh?”_

_“And you’re still so good at giving them to me.”_

Gone.

_Michael raps on the ticket window. “Can we talk?”_

_“Uh, yeah. I guess,” Alex says reluctantly._

_“Somewhere… private, maybe?”_

_Alex leads Michael into the Emporium._

Gone.

_“I’m tired of walking away. I’m tired of not saying what I want to say.”_

_“And what do you want to say, Alex?”_

_“That I loved you. And I think that you loved me. For a long time.”_

“You love him!” Alex yelled at the other Alex, who stood face-to-face with Michael, oblivious to the latter-day counterpart hollering in his ear. “Love, not loved—tell him you love him, present tense, you moron—”

_“Yeah.” There are tears in Michael’s eyes._

_“But we didn’t even know each other that well, did we? I mean, we just, we-we connected, like something…”_

_“Cosmic.”_

The other Michael appeared next to him.

“I wish I didn’t have to lose this one,” Alex told him. “This is a good memory, even if I should have said I-love-you-present-tense.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over it,” Michael said.

_“I want to know who you are, Guerin.”_

_“Do you want to know who I am? Or do you want to know what I am?”_

“Oooh, you’re about to find out I’m an alien,” Michael said. “That was a fun little chat, wasn’t it, Alex? I wish you’d stuck around, after I showed you the console… but what can ya do, right?”

Filled with shame, Alex looked at him. 

Michael’s eyes held nothing but love and forgiveness.

Until they clouded over, and Michael dissolved along with the memory.

_“Is this really how it ends?” Michael challenges. “The sex was epic. So shouldn’t the breakup involve some pyrotechnics? Scream? Break some stuff? Really make it feel over.”_

_“Sometimes the world ends with a whimper, Guerin.”_

Michael snorted. “You know T.S. Eliot was, like, a raging anti-Semite, right?”

“Wait, T.S. Eliot said that?” Alex frowned. “I heard it on _Doctor Who_.” 

He pitched backwards into a different memory.

_“You’re awake.”_

_“You stayed.”_

Michael was in bed beside him, warm and naked and sleepy.

Oh, not this, Alex thought. Please, please, not this. Let me keep just this one.

“Guerin!”

“What? Take it easy, Manes, I’m right here.”

“Liz is erasing you from my mind,” Alex told him urgently. “Right now. I’m going to lose everything!”

“Well somebody had a weird dream.” Michael arched his back like a cat and stroked Alex’s arm. “I can’t believe you actually stayed.”

“It was late, I was tired…” He found himself caressing Michael’s chest, circling his nipple with his thumb, and dragging his fingers down his belly—no. There was no time for that, they had to— “Focus!” Alex raised his voice. “I asked her to. Liz. I’m sorry. I’m so stupid, Michael, I’m—”

“Everything’s gonna be okay, Private.” Michael kissed him, slow and deep.

Alex pulled out of the kiss. “No, it’s not,” he insisted. But his body was responding to Michael’s proximity, his heat, and the gentle persistence of his caresses. Michael’s hand drifted lower beneath the sheet, and then, impossibly, he felt Michael’s fingertips brushing over the ruin of his right knee. He sighed deeply, and it was halfway between a moan and a sob—

Then he remembered. “I need it to stop,” he reminded Michael, “before I wake up and I don’t know you anymore.”

“Okay, then tell Liz to cancel it,” Michael said easily, rolling on top of him.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Alex said. “I can’t cancel it. I’m asleep. I took sleeping pills—”

Michael was kissing down his chest, his stomach, pausing to flick his tongue into his navel. “So, I’m thinking I blow you,” he said, pushing Alex’s legs apart, “then I fuck you again, and you come twice before breakfast—how does that sound?”

“Michael!” Alex groaned. “Stop trying to distract me! It’s not gonna work, okay? This is all being deleted, right now, and I can’t wake up to tell Liz I don’t want it erased anymore.”

Michael sighed. “Isn’t this just another of your self-fulfilling prophecies, Alex? Where you tell me it’s not gonna work out? Yeah, okay, if you say so. It’s more important to prove me wrong and you right than to actually—”

“I can’t have this discussion right now! There isn’t time!”

They glowered at each other.

Alex started to cry. “You did it too!” he accused. “You erased me first! It’s the only reason I’m doing it!”

Michael was crying too. “I’m sorry. You know me, Alex, you know I’m impulsive.”

They looked at each other, waterlogged, and Alex felt himself softening.

“It’s one of the things I love about you,” he admitted.

" _Hello! I have bagels.”_

“Oh, shit!” Alex yelped. “That’s Isobel with the bagels! In just a second I’m gonna reject you and you’re gonna go out to meet her, and then this memory will be—”

“You’re gonna reject me?” Michael looked hurt.

“Only ’cause I’m scared,” Alex said. “But, Michael, listen, before I forget this ever hap—”

“Hang on, hang on,” Michael interrupted. “I think I have an idea.”

“This is no time for sex!” Alex snapped.

_“Michael? I need to talk to you. I brought bagels! And coffee!”_

“It might be, actually,” Michael said, smirking. “Your memories of me, you said that’s what Liz’s magic potion erases, right? Nothing else.”

“I—yeah, I assume. But—”

“This, here—this is a memory of me,” Michael said. “This is a memory of the morning we woke up together in my trailer. And we were about to fuck again, before Isobel cockblocked us with her bagels, is that right?”

“Er, probably. I mean, it certainly seemed to be heading in that dir—”

“The serum’s going to erase this memory. So if this is all happening inside your mind, why don’t you take me somewhere else, a different memory, where I don’t belong? And then we can hide out there till you wake up.”

“You’re a genius,” Alex breathed, leaning into kiss him.

“I know,” Michael said.

The trailer and Michael were beginning to get fuzzy around the edges.

“It’s starting!” Alex exclaimed. “Shit, shit, shit—”

“Take a deep breath and think, Alex. Take me with you. It’s gonna be okay.”

Alex grabbed his hand, and they plummeted together—

—into his childhood bedroom.

They were a tight fit in his narrow twin bed, still naked and sticky from their exertions in the airstream.

“This was your room?” Michael asked.

“Yup.” Alex glanced around. “Judging from the décor, I must be about… four?”

“ _Four_?” Michael’s voice cracked and shot up an octave. “Are you telling me I’m naked in bed with a fucking four-year-old?”

“Sort of?” Alex grimaced. “I mean, we’re still _us,_ we still look like—except, and I know this gonna sound weird, but like, I kind of want my mom?”

“Jesus Christ, Alex.”

“I think it’s the four-year-old in me,” Alex reflected. “’Cause I know what’s happening, I know we’re twenty-eight and we’re just hiding in this memory, but I really”—his eyes filled—“I _really_ want my mom right now, Michael.”

“This is _warped_ ,” Michael said. He looked slightly ill.

“I want my mom.” Alex sniffled. The longing was so pronounced, so real. But so was Michael, squeezed into bed beside him. “I don’t want to lose you, Michael.”

“I’m right here,” Michael reminded him. “Just don’t… _touch_ me. Not till you’re older.”

“I’m scared.” Alex wiped his nose, trying not to cry. “I want my mom. I don’t want to lose you. I want my—”

“Shut up!” Michael barked. “I think this is working. It’s not fading. The memory. I think we’re hidden!”

“You shut up,” Alex said petulantly. Then: “Someone’s coming.”

“What? Who? Your dad?” Reflexively, Michael shoved Alex back, placing his own body between Alex and the door.

“Ow, get off!” Alex squeaked. “We have to pretend we’re asleep, she’s coming!” He yanked the covers over them till only the tops of their heads were visible. “Shhh.”

His mother opened the door and slipped into the dark room. “Alex?” she whispered. “Are you asleep, baby boy?”

“I really want her to pick me up,” Alex told Michael under the covers. “It’s crazy how strong that desire is.”

“Alex, my love?”

“I was trying to make her happy by pretending I was asleep,” Alex explained. “I thought it was what she wanted. Now I wish I’d talked to her instead, because she’s gonna leave us pretty soon after this.”

The footsteps receded, and the door closed behind her.

“Whoa,” Michael said, flinging the quilt off. “Did I just meet your mom?”

“She left.” Alex blinked tearfully. “She _left_ me, Michael. Soon you will, too.”

Michael took his hands. “You’re gonna remember me in the morning,” he intoned. “And you’ll come over to my place and tell me about _us_ and we’ll start over, okay? Alex?”

“I loved you so much, that morning in the trailer,” Alex said wistfully. “Waking up together was—. I’m sorry I pushed you away. Maybe everything else would have happened differently, if I hadn’t panicked and—”

Michael kissed him.

“You smelled so good,” Alex went on, leaning his head on Michael’s chest. The sun was shining through the airstream window, warming their skin. “Like sex and sweat, and I remember thinking you smelled like the desert, whatever that means. And Michael—”

But Michael was gone. Oh no, Alex thought, it was going, it was—

Gone.

_“Why are you being so nice to me?”_

_“People don’t always have an agenda. They can just be nice to each other for no reason sometimes.”_

_“Not in my experience,” Michael says. But he takes the guitar anyway, holding it reverentially. “It’s the only thing that makes me feel quiet. Playing music.”_

_“Quiet?”_

_“Well, I have all this chaos going on inside me all the time, and… all I want to do is get away from myself. But then I play, and my, uh… my entropy changes. Everything goes quiet.”_

_Alex watches him play._

“How did you manage to fuck that up?” Michael demanded, suddenly beside him again. “We were so well hidden—why’d you bring us back to the airstream?”

“I didn’t mean to!” Alex protested. “My brain is all scrambled up like an egg. I’m having trouble remembering anything without you.”

“Don’t be dumb, Alex. You have seventeen years of material, before we so much as looked _—_ ”

“I looked!” Alex interrupted. “Junior year, I started looking—”

“Fine, sixteen years of memories. And then there’s another ten after that, when you—”

“No,” Alex said. His voice grew stern. “No, Michael. I am not taking you to war with me.”

“But Iraq was farthest you ever got from me,” Michael argued. “We’ll be safe there.”

“Safe?” Alex shook his head. “Guerin, listen to yourself.”

“I’m not saying you have to bring me into combat,” Michael said impatiently. “Just pick a memory, any memory—”

Alex shook his head again.

“The clock’s running out on us, Alex! There must be something, not even the Air Force was rockin’ the Casbah 24/7—”

“I said NO!” It was the loudest he’d ever raised his voice to Michael. Michael’s eyes widened. “I’d rather you forget me,” Alex went on more quietly, “and me forget you, and us stop loving each other—than have you see what I saw over there.”

_“Thank you,” Michael says._

_“You’re welcome.”_

_Alex leans in to kiss him, and Michael turns away._

Then that memory disappeared, too.

Gone.

And Alex knew what was coming next.

Two boys in a shed. The first day of his life.

Or maybe it was the last.

It was the only thing he had left.

_“Have you ever done this before?”_

_“Uh, yeah.”_

“This is it,” Alex said. “The very last one. My god, Michael. It’s almost over.”

_“But not, like, with a…”_

_“With a guy?”_

_“Yeah. And… not with someone that I’ve liked… as much as I like you.”_

“Well, what now?” Michael said. “We just stand around and watch younger-us fuck, watch your dad hit you, watch him wreck my hand, and that’s the end?”

“What else can we do?” Alex said. “We can’t intervene, we’re inside my head. I think… I think this really might be it, Michael.” He wiped his eyes. “You’re supposed to be the genius. You tell me: what do we do?”

“Enjoy it, I guess.” Michael shrugged. “Say goodbye.”

_Michael and Alex kiss._

“Why did you erase me, really?” Alex said.

“Loving you felt like dying,” said Michael.

“You called me a virus that night.”

“I might’ve been a little harsh,” Michael conceded. “But you threw my mom in my face—”

“By mistake—”

“By mistake, okay, but how was I supposed to know the difference?” Michael said. “After you left that night, I thought, damn, either I drink myself to death within the month, or something’s gotta give. And then I remembered what Isobel and Liz were experimenting with…” he trailed off.

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry. Even if I don’t remember you, I’ll always be sorry,” Michael said. “But let me ask you something, while there’s still time.”

“Go ahead.”

“I know I told you to leave that night, but… Why did you? Go? You were never one to stand down from a fight.” 

“You said ‘so go.’” Alex swallowed hard. “You said it with such disdain, such contempt for me. Like you finally felt about me… the way I’d always felt about myself. And I—I left. I drove away. I wish I’d stayed. Now I wish I’d stayed. I wish a lot of things.” 

“What if you did stay?”

“I can’t, that memory’s already gone,” Alex said. “And there’s nothing after that, I never saw you again before you erased me.”

Michael sighed. “I can’t watch this anymore,” he said, nodding his head at the teenage Alex and Michael tangling on the mattress. “Not knowing what comes after. Let’s just…”

“What?” Alex felt the tears coming again, and he did nothing to stop them.

“Let’s make up a goodbye for us,” Michael suggested. “Pretend we had one.”

They wrapped their arms around each other. Clinging desperately—Alex hoped, he prayed, for muscle memory, for some kind of imprint, for something, anything, that would remind him what it felt like to hold Michael—

“Bye, Alex,” Michael said. His eyelashes were wet with tears, glued together in little triangles. “I love you.”

“I love you, Michael.” Alex could hardly get the words out. “I love you—”

Michael smiled at him. It was the same smile he’d given his mother at Caulfield. Alex thought it was the most beautiful smile he had ever seen. And for a moment, it made him a believer, that maybe, just maybe—

They kissed.

“Come find me in the desert,” Michael said.  
  
  
  
**_The present._**

“Mmm…” Michael sits up as Alex lies on his back, gasping.

“How did you know I’d like that?” he demands.

“Just did, I guess.” Michael shrugs, looking pleased with himself.

“You’ve _definitely_ done this before, there’s no way—”

“No way what? I told you I was up for anything.” Michael collapses beside him. His chin is wet and shiny with spit. “If you wanna come, though, you’ll have to get on top,” he says. “You’ve wiped me out, Manes. Time for you to do some of the heavy lifting.”

“I’ve done plenty!” Alex insists, even as he sits up and searches for the lube.

“Yeah, sure, if that’s what you call lying there like a beached jellyfish, while I’m busy eating you out or bouncing around on your d—”

Alex laughs, he can’t help it. Michael is so utterly forthright in bed. And completely shameless. And marvelously attuned to the workings of Alex’s body; it’s like he intuits what Alex wants before Alex knows it himself.

It’s the best sex of his life, and it’s not even over yet.

God, Michael is good with his hands.

He starts to feel trepidatious, though, after Michael withdraws his fingers and rolls on a condom. “My balance isn’t great,” he warns him. “I can only put weight on my left knee, so I’m not going to be able to move very well once I’m—”

“I’ve _got_ you, Alex, I promise,” Michael assures him.

The strange thing is—Alex believes him.

Michael sits against the wall and Alex makes the ungainly clamber astride his lap. Michael’s hands steady his hips— _this okay?_ Michael’s eyes ask, and Alex nods—and guide him down onto his cock. Alex is breathless by the time he’s fully seated.

“Whoa,” he says.

“Yeah, whoa.” Michael looks slightly dazed.

Alex drags his fingers through the hair on Michael’s chest, pinches his nipples to get his attention.

Michael jerks like he’d been electroshocked. “Interesting,” he says, a little raggedly, and then he rallies. He starts slow, barely circling his hips, letting Alex get the feel of him. Then it’s a gradual build, so incremental that Alex forgets what’s coming and cries out in astonishment when Michael finds his prostate. He sways, listing dangerously to the right, but somehow he doesn’t capsize. Michael must have caught him, he thinks, except Michael’s hands are busy elsewhere, one grasping his hip, another exploring the place where they’re joined, and Michael doesn’t have a third hand—

But he’s in no state to start counting hands. Equilibrium restored, he grabs Michael’s shoulders and uses them for balance as he moves, contributing his share of the _heavy lifting._ He finds a strange harmony with his body as he rides Michael’s cock, a curious grace utterly at odds with the precarity of his position. Awed and a little mistrusting, he slumps forward and drapes himself over Michael’s chest. Michael takes over smoothly, hands palming his ass to spread him wider, adjusting the angle, the rhythm. Their faces are very close now. Michael’s curls are plastered to his forehead, and there’s a bead of sweat running down his temple. Alex catches it on his tongue, then drops kisses along Michael’s jaw till he reaches his chin, and then it’s only a short distance to his mouth.

They make out desperately, Michael giving him just enough to keep him on edge, easing off every time he gets too close—

When Michael pulls out of the kiss, Alex positively _whimpers._

“I’m not gonna lie to you, Alex,” Michael says, breathing harshly. “I’m a little—freaked out—right now. I don’t understand what’s happening”—but he’s still fucking him, rougher now—“and this shouldn’t be possible”—and pulling him closer—“because we don’t know each other”—a hand around his cock—“but at the same time”—driving into him—“I feel like we’ve been having epic sex for years”—faster—“and my head is full of things that don’t make any sense”—and deeper—“like I _do_ know you, like you already mean something to me”—and perfect— “almost like I love you—”

Alex comes, all over Michael’s stomach. And he’s reeling, every cell in his body thrumming with exaltation—

But Michael has gone wide-eyed and pale, panic in every rigid line of his face. “I need to stop,” he chokes. “It’s too much, I need—”

The fear in his voice jolts Alex back to earth. He starts lifting off, but when he moves, Michael makes a pained noise, tenses, and comes. Alex holds perfectly still as Michael shudders through his orgasm, eyes squeezed shut and mouth a downturned furrow of misery. When it’s over, Alex dismounts carefully. He removes the condom from Michael’s cock—still hard—and bins it. Then he uses a corner of the sheet to wipe his cum off Michael’s stomach.

All the while, Michael won’t look at him.

He’s flat-out on his back, chest rising and falling rapidly, all splayed limbs and tousled curls and swollen lips, and Alex thinks he’d be the most magnificent vision of debauched splendor but for the terrifying blankness behind his eyes, as if his soul has fled his body.

Finally, _finally_ , Michael looks at him, but his eyes are still opaque, expressionless. “If it’s not too much to ask,” he says dully, “I’d appreciate that lift back to my truck.”

“Sure. Yeah.” 

They put their clothes on in silence. Michael gathers his tools. He charges out the door as soon as they’re ready, leaving Alex to trail after him.

The rush of cold night air comes as a relief. A gibbous moon sits heavily in the sky; a handful of stars glimmer through the dense cloud cover.

It must be late, Alex thinks. Very late.

When they get inside Alex’s car, Michael’s black hat is still sitting on the dashboard where he left it. Clearing his throat awkwardly, Michael picks it up and holds it in his lap.

Alex starts the engine. He shifts gears and, much to his relief, accelerates smoothly this time. He watches the airstream recede in his rearview mirror. They’ve brought the musk of sex into the jeep with them; the air is thick with it. Alex wonders if he ought to crack a window. He can feel Michael’s fingerprints all over his body. The strained silence makes his palms itch, and—

“I’m not sure what that was like for you,” Michael says abruptly, “but whatever happened back there… seriously fucked with my head.” 

“It was strange for me, too,” Alex agrees, cautiously neutral.

“Good strange? Or bad strange?”

“What do you think?”

That elicits a tiny huff of laughter. “Too good to be true?” Michael asks. His phone buzzes in his pocket, but he ignores it.

“Well, it happened,” Alex says. “So that must make it true.”

They pass another mile in silence.

“I don’t want to pretend it didn’t happen,” Alex says, deciding to play his hand. “I mean, we just, we-we connected, like something…”

“Cosmic?” Michael supplies.

There’s a twang in his head like a broken guitar string. 

_Cosmic. Cosmic. Cosmic._

“Yeah,” Alex says shakily. His phone buzzes too; he ignores it.

“I—I’d need some time,” Michael blurts. “If we were to—if you wanted— I mean—…shit.” He growls and tugs on his hair, mumbling something that sounds like _goddamn mess._

“Michael?”

“ _Yes_ , Alex?”

“Whatever you were just proposing—yeah, I do.”

Michael laughs weakly. “You said ‘I do,’” he quips. “Does that mean we’re married?”

Alex smiles.

“I meant what I said, though, about needing time,” Michael says. “I—I’m not a cheater, Alex, and no matter how mind-blowing the sex was, it never should’ve happened, all right? And that’s on me. I gotta break up with Maria before this goes any further.”

“Maria?” Alex repeats.

“Yeah, my girlfriend,” Michael says, like Alex is being deliberately thick. “Maria? She runs the Wild Pony in town.”

“Maria DeLuca?” Alex says. Dread creeps down his back.

“You know her?”

“She’s one of my best friends. Since high school.”

“Wait, _what_?”

“ _You’re_ Maria’s mystery boyfriend?”

“Mystery, what do you mean? It was never a secret or anything.”

Alex can feel Michael’s eyes burning holes in the side of his face, but he stares resolutely at the patch of road illuminated by his headlights. “Do you know Liz?”

“We work together on occasion. We have some… interests… in common. And there’s the fact that she’s dating my brother.”

“Your brother?” he whispers.

“Deputy Maxwell Evans, Roswell’s finest. Are we playing six degrees of separation?”

“And Isobel?”

“My sister, yeah.”

“What about Kyle Valenti? D’you know him, too?”

“Yeah, Christ, don’t remind me—”

Alex thinks he might be sick. He swerves over to the side of the road and stumbles out of the jeep, collapsing to his knees a few yards away. He clutches handfuls of gravel, grass, anything to ground himself as the world tilts vertiginously on its axis.

“Are you okay?” Michael crouches down beside him. “Alex, what’s going on?”

“How is it possible,” Alex says, breathing very fast now, “that I’ve spent the past year with those people—with Kyle and Liz, with Maria, with your _siblings_ —and I’ve never seen you before? never even _heard_ of you? And if Max and Isobel”—any semblance of composure crumbles— “oh my god, if Max and Isobel are aliens, then you are too, oh my god, _you’re_ an alien—”

“You know about _aliens_?” The ferocity on Michael’s face is terrifying.

“I got tangled up in this insane government conspiracy that my dad—never mind—and when Isobel’s husband turned out to be—”

Suddenly Alex is flying backwards, he smashes against the side of his car—

“And whose side were _YOU_ on?” Michael thunders, nostrils flaring, eyes blazing like coals. The air around him congeals and thickens like pudding. “Because I _swear_ I will kill you before I let another fucking _human_ harm my family—”

There’s an excruciating pressure on Alex’s chest, like he’s being crushed in the coils of a giant snake. He chokes the words out: “Liz’s side—Kyle’s—Max’s—yours, maybe—”

“ _MY_ side?” Michael roars. “How the fuck could you be on _my_ side, when you were never fucking _there_?”

“Neither—were—you—” Alex pants. Dark spots are starting to blot out his vision.

The pressure disappears, and he crumples to the ground, gasping. He sucks the cold night air into his lungs greedily. 

Isobel can influence minds, Max has something to do with healing and electricity; Michael’s power must be—

Something clicks into place.

“So that’s how we managed to have sex like that, even with my leg.” He’s still panting; his body feels like it’s been forced through a compression tube. “You were holding me up, weren’t you? With your mind?”

“ _That’s_ the first thing out of your mouth?” Michael looks at him askance. “When I could’ve killed you just now?”

 _But you didn’t_ , Alex thinks. He touches his ribs gingerly.

“You’re a trip, Manes.” There’s a grudging respect in Michael’s voice as he joins him on the ground, keeping a safe distance between them. “I can move stuff with my mind, yeah. I’m telekinetic.”

“Like Carrie?”

“Er, sort of.” The quicksilver fury has faded as precipitously as it came on, Alex observes; Michael just looks scared now, like a little kid. “Manes—Alex—none of this makes any sense. I was there the whole time! Liz and I invented the serum that healed Isobel, I fought Noah with them, I brought Max back after he blew a fuse resurrecting Rosa—. So if we were both there…”

“Why don’t we know each other?” Alex finishes grimly.

“Yeah, I…” Absently Michael takes his phone out of his pocket and glances at the screen. He frowns; then he does an almost comical doubletake. “It’s from Liz,” he says. “Alex—”

He thrusts the phone under Alex’s nose.

Alex reads: _Dear Michael, I’m so sorry for this, but I couldn’t live with myself another minute without telling you. I’ve talked with Max and Isobel and Kyle, and we’ve all agreed you should know. A few days ago, I helped you erase part of your memory with a serum I’d created for Isobel. You wanted to erase your eleven-year relationship with Alex Manes. I wasn’t able to stop you, so I helped you. I recorded part of our conversation before the procedure. Here’s the audio file. I hope you and Alex can find your way back to each other one day._

“It’s a joke,” Michael says. His voice wavers, cracks. “It’s a sick joke. Somebody must have seen us in the car together, and—”

Alex opens the audio attachment, presses play.

LIZ’S VOICE: _Are you sure you want to do this, Michael?_

MICHAEL’S VOICE: _Yeah, yeah, I’m fucking sure. Now give me the jab or I’ll do it myself._

LIZ’S VOICE: _I want you to tell me why again._

MICHAEL’S VOICE: _I told you, Liz, I told you—loving him is the worst thing that ever happened to me! And I survived a goddamn spaceship crash! He’s tangled up in all these terrible memories in my life—my hand, my mom, and that’s only the tip of the fucking iceberg! His family has been torturing and killing mine for more than seventy years. But I still love him. And I probably always will. That’s why I broke up with Maria—it wasn’t fair to her, ’cause I can’t move on, I can’t get him out of my system, and it’s killing me, okay? He’s walked away from me so many times before and he’ll do it again, I know he will, ’cause that’s what he does. And I’ll keep taking him back, ’cause that’s what I do. Even though it feels like a crash landing, every time. Because—_

Michael plucks the phone out of his limp fingers and pauses the recording.

“Why did you and Liz make this?” Alex hears himself asking. There’s a ringing in his ears, a mocking voice: _you knew it was too good to be true…_

“I…” Michael is shaking his head frantically, curls flying in every direction. His eyes are utterly wild. “Alex, I didn’t. I don’t understand, I have no clue what the fuck this—”

“It’s your voice,” Alex says flatly.

“I know! But—”

“So you’re saying Liz recorded you saying this, without you knowing you were saying it? She, she what? She _hypnotized_ you? _Drugged_ you?”

“I don’t know, all right?” Michael clutches fistfuls of his own hair and rocks back and forth. “I don’t know—I mean, I am a fucking alien or whatever, it could be some weird temporal glitch—a spacetime anomaly—or maybe it’s like that thing in _Scrooge_ , you know, where some spectre from the future—”

“What are you talking about?” Alex explodes. “The Ghost of Christmas Fu—it’s called _A Christmas Carol_ , not fucking _Scrooge_ —”

“Who gives a shit what it’s called!” Michael shouts. “You know what I mean!” He releases his hair, the curls shooting up riotously. Then: “Your phone went off in the car, right after mine did,” he says distractedly. “Maybe you oughta check if you got one, too, before you start hurling out accusations—”

Furiously, Alex digs out his phone, determined to prove Michael a liar and a crank, a deranged psycho who—

He has one new message notification.

It’s a text from Liz.

_Dear Alex, I’m so sorry for this, but I couldn’t live with myself another minute…_

“I got it, too,” he rasps. Rancor instantly replaced with apprehension. “Oh my god…” 

“Play it,” Michael whispers.

LIZ’S VOICE: _But Alex—are you really, really sure?_

They look at each other.

ALEX’S VOICE: _I’m sure, Liz._

LIZ’S VOICE: _Tell me why._

ALEX’S VOICE: _You already know why! Because he erased me first. Because he saw me and he didn’t know me anymore. He looked away! He looked away, even though he promised me he never would! He’d gone right back to Maria—_

Michael makes a pained sound.

ALEX’S VOICE: — _and it was like we’d never happened, none of it had ever happened. This is worse than anything I could’ve imagined, worse than if he’d stopped loving me. I can’t live with all our memories on my own. You have to take it off me, Liz. If Michael gets to forget me, then I have to forget him, too. Besides—_

“I think that’s enough,” Alex says. His voice sounds strange to his ears, like it doesn’t belong to him anymore.

“Leave it,” Michael says. “It’s only fair.”

ALEX’S VOICE: … _he’s not the only one who got dealt a shit hand in life, you know? So how come he gets to be a train wreck, tearing people apart, leaving chaos and destruction in his wake, while the rest of us still have to get up and go through the motions? He’s probably fucked half the town at this point—why does he think sex is the only thing he has to offer anyone? Michael is a literal genius, he’s the smartest person I know, and he’s probably gonna drink himself to death before he turns thirty._

Alex turns off the recording.

“I genuinely like sex,” Michael says. “Just so you know.”

“I believe you,” Alex says.

Michael brings up his knees, wraps his arms around them. “I feel like I’m having an out of body experience,” he says. “But—”

“It makes a weird kind of sense, doesn’t it?” Alex feels numb, anesthetized. “Why we connected the way we did.”

Michael nods. “We had a history.”

“The moment I saw you, I felt like I already knew you.”

“Eleven years.” Michael rests his chin on his knees. “We loved each other.”

“Yeah. I guess we did.”

They sit for a long time without speaking. Alex feels the cold seeping into his bones.

“Hey, I can see my truck.” Michael points suddenly, and, sure enough, Alex can make out a glint of metal down the road. “I’m gonna…” He jumps to his feet. “I’m gonna fix her, then I’ve gotta… I’m gonna—go.” He offers Alex his hand; after hesitating a moment, Alex takes it and lets Michael pull him up. They both let go very quickly. “Well, this has been—yeah. It was nice meeting you and stuff.”

“Yeah, you too,” Alex says faintly. “I had a good time.”

Michael gives him an awkward sort of wave and starts walking away.

“Hey, wait!” Alex calls.

Michael turns. “What?”

Alex isn’t actually sure what he wants to say. “Why…” he casts about and seizes on something at random. “Why did you have nail polish remover back at the trailer?”

Michael looks at him strangely. Then he shrugs. “Acetone is like crack for aliens,” he explains. “If we don’t build up our powers, we get sick when we use them. The acetone helps with that. I mostly drink it for the crack factor, though.” 

Alex isn’t sure if he’s joking or not.

“Anyway, I’m gonna go,” Michael says. “Take care of yourself, Alex.”

He sets off again.

“Wait!”

“What?” Michael stops, but he doesn’t turn around.

“What were all those drawings and diagrams you had up on the wall?” Alex asks breathlessly.

“Designs for a spacecraft I’ll build one day. To take me away.” Michael starts walking again.

“Wait!” 

Michael spins on his heel. “What, Alex?” he says impatiently. “What do you want?”

“I…” Alex is at a loss. “I don’t know. Just wait. Please? I don’t want you to go yet.”

Michael looks back at him, stone-faced.

“We loved each other!” Alex thinks if he can only keep talking, keep _Michael_ talking, then maybe Michael will stay. It feels imperative that he stay a little bit longer. “For eleven years. That has to count for something, right?”

“But it’s all gone now,” Michael says.

“Not entirely!” Alex insists. “This whole day has been one déjà vu after another, we kept saying how it felt like we already knew each other—” He breaks off. This isn’t working. He can see it isn’t working in every uncompromising line of Michael’s posture, poised for flight. “Michael,” he says. “Please.”

“ _Why_?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugs. “I just know I want you to stay.”

“I need to fix my truck and go home.”

“But—”

Michael growls a noise of pure frustration. “Alright—fine—whatever—. Give me three days and we’ll—. Three days, that’s… Sunday? First thing Sunday morning. I’ll come to you. At the cabin.” He shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “We’ll talk then, okay?”

“Ok—” Belatedly, Michael’s words register in his brain. “Wait. You said the cabin. How do you know where I…”

“I just do.” Michael shakes his head. “See you Sunday, Alex.”

He strides off into the night.

Watching him go, Alex feels a yawning ache open inside of him, like an unfilled space of loss.  
  
  
  
**_Three days later._**

 _First thing Sunday morning_ becomes late morning, then afternoon.

Alex might have gone spare, watching the clock tick the hours away, but he’s made a discovery of his own. When Michael finally knocks on his door, Alex has the contents of a large garbage bag strewn about his living room.

“Look what I found!” he announces, dragging Michael inside without so much as _hello_. “Liz said she told me to burn everything, but apparently I just tossed it into the basement.”

Together, they survey the tangle of books, clothes, and miscellanea on the floor. Michael, who had stood on his doorstep with the squared shoulders and clenched jaw of a man walking into combat, relaxes palpably. Alex watches him take an involuntary step towards the guitar, lying amidst the jumble with an old Air Force sweatshirt tangled around its neck. Then he reaches into his jacket pocket. 

“I found something too,” he says, offering Alex a faded picture. “Must’ve escaped the bonfire.”

Carefully, Alex takes it from him. A desert backdrop, two boys and their guitars. Seventeen-year-old Alex frowns down at his instrument, forehead creased, while seventeen-year-old Michael looks on, affectionate and amused.

“Things are starting to come back,” Michael tells him. “I’ve spoken with Max and Isobel, and with Liz, and she says maybe it didn’t work perfectly, the serum, because it was an experimental procedure and… yeah. I’m remembering. I dreamt about the prison the other night. You were there; you said I was your family.”

“I’ve been remembering, too.” Alex gives back the photo. “I talked to Kyle, he told me about Caulfield and what—what happened there. And then I could remember everything from that day, like I’d never forgotten. Like a—like a lost file had been restored in my brain, or something.”

“You’re a codebreaker.” Michael blinks. “Right?”

“Yeah. Rosa says I use too many computer metaphors.”

“Well, OK Computer,” Michael says drily, “I want full manual control now.”

Alex smiles; after a moment so does Michael. Then they both look away.

“Did you listen to the rest of your tape from Liz?” Michael asks.

“I did, yeah.” Alex ducks his head apologetically. “I said some… pretty awful things.”

“So did I,” Michael acknowledges. “It’s hard to know how to—I mean, do I say sorry, do I apologize, even though I don’t remember saying or feeling any of that stuff? Like the emotional, the emotional—hell, what did Liz call it, the emotional—”

The phrase rises to his tongue, unbidden: “The emotional core of the memory.” 

“That’s it,” Michael agrees. “The emotional core of certain things—like the prison—or our first time together, in the shed—Alex, d’you remember that?”

Alex nods, throat suddenly too tight for words. _How could I forget? How could I possibly—_

“Things like that were pretty accessible to me,” Michael says. “But I can’t for the life of me tap into what I was feeling when I made up my mind to erase you.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing?”

Michael shrugs noncommittally. To Alex’s appraising eye, he looks exhausted—red-eyed and wan, as if he hasn’t slept. But his hair is still damp from washing and there’s only a faint shadow of stubble on his jaw. Clearly he’s made an effort, in his best black jeans and a clean button-down miraculously possessed of all its buttons. Alex has tried, too; to what end, he doesn’t know, but he’s wearing the pants Liz swears make his ass look dynamite, so.

“Why don’t you—sit down, or something?” he offers belatedly. “I made coffee, d’you want anything to eat? I know it’s past breakfast, but I could make cereal—well, not _make_ , but, like… Or eggs? D’you want eggs? Or—”

“Just coffee please,” Michael says hastily. “I couldn’t eat, I’m—honestly, I’m just too nervous right now, I feel like I’m about to hurl.”

Alex goes into the kitchen to fetch the coffee. His hands tremble as he fills two mugs; he tries to keep his grip steady when he passes one to Michael, but he twitches when Michael’s fingers brush his, sending a wave of coffee splashing onto the floor that they both try to clean up at once.

“You’re nervous?” Alex asks, after they’ve sopped up the spill and refilled Michael’s mug. “I didn’t think you got nervous, Guerin.”

“Are you kidding?” Michael says. “I almost turned around twice on the way over. And I wasn’t late, either, I was just parked down the road, listening to _London Calling_ on repeat.”

“‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’?”

“That’s a different album,” Michael says.

“Were you this candid before?” Alex contemplates sitting beside Michael on the couch but lowers himself into the chair instead.

“Isobel says I should try to be more honest about how I’m feeling,” Michael says. He begins to roll his eyes but stops himself. “Apparently it’s better for communication.”

“Yeah. That, um—that sounds like sensible advice.” Alex’s tongue feels cumbersome and heavy, tripping up his words. “I guess we should—do that, then. Communicate. Or—you know. Talk.”

Michael’s lips twitch. “Yeah. We probably should.” 

They talk for hours.

Stumbling and hesitant at first. Eyes meeting, hastily skittering away. Every ‘ _do you remember?_ ’ a treacherous minefield of conflict, bitterness, and poorly-repressed anguish. Michael loses his temper more than once. “Well, that’s not the way _I_ remember it!” he snaps, jumping to his feet and pacing the small room like a caged panther. Or: “Pretty fucking convenient of you to forget _that_ , Manes.” And periodically Alex retreats into himself, guarded, spiteful. He suspects Michael of taunting him with could-have-beens, should-have-beens, subjunctive ghosts of lives unlived.

“This is hard for me!” Michael exclaims when Alex needles him one too many times over his relationship with Maria. “ _Really_ hard for me—”

“Hard for _you_?” Alex scoffs. “How do you think _I_ felt when—”

“I don’t even remember coming out, okay?” Michael sits down, only to pop right back up again and resume pacing. “Those conversations with Max and Isobel got wiped along with everything else, because apparently I was telling them about _you_ in the same breath! So I don’t—”

“You don’t _what_?”

“Well, it was kind of a shock, learning that I came out in a past fucking life, and now I have to deal with the consequences in this one—”

“You didn’t have a problem with who you were before.”

“I don’t have a problem with being _bisexual_ , Alex”—Michael’s flashing eyes dare him to argue— “I have a problem with losing control of the narrative of my own life and feeling like it doesn’t belong to me anymore!”

“You had your memory erased, Guerin! What did you expect?”

The bickering continues in this vein for a while.

Then the tenor shifts. They grow expansive in their recollections. Prompting each other’s memories, filling in blanks, regaling one another with oddities they’ve exhumed over the past several days. “I actually thought you were cooking meth in your trailer!” Alex chortles. “Like Walter White!” Michael groans at that. “Seriously?” he says. “Well, how ’bout this: apparently I was convinced there was something between you and Valenti…”

Sometime in the late afternoon, they drift into the kitchen and eat a distractedly assembled lunch. Michael demurs when Alex offers him a beer; Alex tries not to read anything into it, just pours him a glass of water instead.

_He’s probably gonna drink himself to death before he turns thirty…_

“Three days sober,” Michael says, reading his mind.

He watches Michael flex the fingers of his left hand. A strange choked sound escapes his throat; Michael looks up sharply then follows the direction of his gaze. “Yeah,” he says. “I went almost a week without remembering this, without thinking about it.”

Alex winces. “It must have been nice.”

The guilt had assailed him like an avalanche, when he remembered what his father had done. It grips him in its throes still, and oh how he wishes the serum had obliterated just that single moment so irretrievably it would lie beyond their recollections forever—

“Nah.” Michael bats that away. “I’ve thought about it a lot, and—it doesn’t matter how we feel about it, what happened to us that day made us who we are, set the next ten years in motion. _I_ don’t make sense without it, and neither do you. And, for the record, I’ve never, _ever_ blamed you. Not now, not then. So…”

He reaches out, waggles his fingers. Alex eyes the hand apprehensively, uncertain what Michael wants from him.

“Take it,” Michael urges, a note of exasperation in his voice. “My hand, Manes. It won’t bite.”

Alex rather thinks it might—he’s ambivalent about Max’s healing job—but he does as Michael asks. He takes the proffered hand in his own and runs his thumb over Michael’s knuckles. The smooth skin belies the horrific violence done to it, but minor irregularities in the joints, the slight misalignment of bones, offer tangible proof that this is still his Michael—

 _His_?

Michael chooses that moment to bring up the memory they’ve been avoiding all day, drawing asymptotically closer but never quite touching it. “So, the big fight last week,” he begins. “We—said some shit.”

Alex drops his hand and retreats a step back. “We did,” he allows. “But Guerin—”

“I think we have to go there,” Michael says doggedly. “I mean—it was the catalyst, right? The reason I went off and ruined us with this erasing business—”

“I think we were already pretty—ruined,” Alex says. He digs the nail of his index finger into his thumb. The cuticle tears and starts bleeding. “By that point.”

“I got drunk. I stood you up, didn’t I?” Michael scrunches up his face like a weak parody of forgetfulness. “It’s all fragments after that. Probably the booze as much as the forget-me serum… I know I said things I shouldn’t have.”

“So did I.” Alex hesitates. His own recollections of that night are a hideous, patchwork thing, worse than any monster Mary Shelley might’ve dreamed up. Certain phrases rise out of the muck to torment him; other things, worse things, lurk below the surface, all the more deadly for being submerged. “I—maybe we should let it stay forgotten.”

“Alex, we lost everything.” Michael rests his elbows on the counter and drops his head into his hands. “We are literally brain-damaged. But if we try hard enough, we can keep filling in the blanks, we can recover all our memories—that’s the most important thing, right? Remembering? We’re halfway there already—”

“What for?” Alex presses. “Why do we have dredge up every last shitty thing we said to each other? What possible good would it do?”

Michael takes his head out of his hands and looks at him intently. “Well that all depends, doesn’t it?”

“On what?”

“On where we go from here,” Michael says.

Alex gouges into his thumb again. 

“We could look at this and agree, yeah, we did the right thing, erasing us, because we were a toxic combination, mutually assured destruction, and now we can finally let each other go and make a clean break. Or…”

“Or?” Alex prompts, voice wavering.

“Or… We start again.” Michael’s face gives nothing away. His eyes are dark and inscrutable. “We take this as a sign, that—that less than a day after we finish erasing each other, we find our way right back again, like magnets, like something cosmic and inevitable, because we never look away, not really. And we—Alex, you’re bleeding.”

“What?”

“You’re bleeding.” Michael plucks at his hand, holds it up to show him.

His thumb, oh right, it’s bleeding, so it is, a tear in his cuticle where he picked too hard at the skin. “Yeah, I guess I am.”

Michael is still cradling his hand, regarding it with a kind of fixed concentration.

“I’m having a memory,” Michael says, “of you doing this to yourself when you’re upset, and me taking your finger into my mouth to make it stop bleeding. But I… I don’t know if I should do that now.”

“Oh.” Alex bites his lip. “You could. I mean, only if you wanted. I wouldn’t mind.”

“Yeah?” Michael says, and Alex can feel the heat of him, blazing out like a furnace.

_You do run hot, Guerin._

Alex nods. “Yeah.”

With deliberate slowness, allowing him every opportunity to change his mind, Michael raises Alex’s hand to his mouth. His lips brush over the afflicted thumb, then they part, and Alex lets Michael guide it into his mouth. Michael’s hot tongue dabs solicitously at the wound, and then he sucks gently. His cheeks hollow, his eyes flutter shut.

Alex sways on the spot.

Michael opens his eyes. He releases Alex’s thumb, holds it up for inspection. “Bleeding’s stopped,” he says roughly. “Alex…”

“I want to start again,” Alex tells him. 

Michael is perfectly still.

“We’ll do it better this time, do it smarter,” Alex says. “We’ll forgive each other, and we’ll be kinder to each other. No more looking away.” He takes a breath. “What do you think?”

“Okay,” Michael says simply.

“Okay.”  
  
  
  
**_+_**

Gradually, Michael starts leaving some of his things at the cabin. A few t-shirts tucked alongside Alex’s in the wardrobe. His toothbrush in the bathroom, an engineering textbook on the table. The odd bottle of acetone. In bed they fold around each other like origami, and Alex discovers it’s possible to feel so grateful that he can hardly get to sleep some nights.

Liz spots them holding hands under the table at the Crashdown. _Oh, you’re back together!_ Michael and Alex exchange a glance; they shrug. They’re back together, and also not _back_ together _._ Every moment feels spontaneous. If they happen upon something, and it chimes with a half-recalled memory of _before_ —

—well, that’s just an interesting coincidence for them.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind_ (2004) was written by Charlie Kaufman & Michel Gondry and directed by Michel Gondry. 
> 
> the poem is Alexander Pope, “Eloisa to Abelard” (1717). 
> 
> thank you so much for reading, and for all the lovely feedback and engagement during this busy, busy week. it's been such a pleasure. 
> 
> <3


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